This is documentation of the research phase of my Survival Series. It was an immersive performance and installation that inhabited a historic dormitory for soldiers training for WWI and II at Headlands Center for the Arts. Over the course of 6 weeks I lay in bed in this room and spoke with hundreds of visitors about their closely-held interpretations of survival and our countries future. From these conversations I made large format posters documenting people’s survival kits and then constructed my own personal survival kit that was held within a handmade boat (the boat could also transform into my coffin). It is a life and death boat. I closed the exhibition with a cinematic lecture exploring the things I had learned from people during my stay. 

Prepare to be Unprepared was a cinematic and performative lecture by artist Constance Hockaday -- a stream of associations exploring how sandy beach survival strategies, homemade boats, linguistic investigations of the word “hope,” Wallace Steven's poem Angel of Paisans and personal anecdotes come together to illustrate the terrifying and liberating ways people make sense of their lives in the age of disaster.